Quickthorn

You've done well if you've been paying just £1/tonne. Everywhere I look, there's an agent or manager keen to get as much as possible for it, and the £12/tonne figure sticks in my mind from a few years back. I know the roadside price is higher now, so it wouldn't surprise me if people are asking more for it standing. When you consider extraction would probably be around £8-10, you need the roadside price to be £25+ to make a reasonable living.

Does anyone buy coupes of firewood standing? I'm wondering what sort of prices people are paying, and what sort of yield they get. I've got an idea of prices for small coppice, but have no idea how much firewood size stuff fetches..my best guess is around £12/ cu. m.

He's hoping, isn't he? If there really is as much as he says, he's expecting £45/ton..and there's plenty of leylandii and half rotten stuff mixed in there, by the looks of it.

Thanks for the tip, chris, I'll have a look.. I'm not selling it, just trying to put a value on it for my accounts.

Out of interest, b101, how much did you sell it for? I'm trying to put a value on mine, which is a 1987 ex army n/as diesel, fair condition.

Here's mine, still chuggin' along.

Hi Dan, I can't promise anything, but you can pm me your details if you like, including what qualifications and experience you have. If anything comes up, I will let you know. I'm very local to you - probably 15 mins drive - but a lot of my work is in Notts, and it will now go quiet until September.

What threw me on this was the bloke on their "helpline", who told me rent wasn't allowed as an expense. I found something on the HMRC site which contradicts that, as it explains how you have to make some sort of sensible estimate, which takes into account how much space you use, and how long for. There isn't a fixed rate as such, but you can go by office floor area as a % of house area, and time spent as an office as a % of the week. HMRC Business Income Manuals My use of a bedroom every now and again doesn't amount to much, probably about £1-2 per week, but the garage where I keep and maintain my stuff is worth about £10/week, so 50% of that easily allows for the private use. I count 50% of the phone now, rather than all of it, just to be on the safe side. I hadn't thought of laundry costs.. It's a good thing not to be too greedy and claim for 100% for a room or garage, otherwise you might attract business rates. Dean, if I was paying a lot of tax and the accountant hadn't picked up on these things, I'd be pretty unimpressed myself. If you have to tell him what he should be claiming, what's the point in having him?

Bad news indeed. I saw the bit where the driver had fainted..one person trying to help him, 15 or so others more concerned about taking pictures.!

Cheers, steve. That's about the figure I had in mind.

I use a bedroom in my rented house as an office for a few hours a week, and store my gear in a garage on the property. I'd like to claim some of the rent, council tax and power bills back as a business expense. Does anyone else do this? I only want to claim a sensible amount that would stand up to investigation.

They're right about splitting as early as possible. On a job last year, I salvaged some wood that had been felled and just left in a ditch a few years ago. It might as well have been felled a few hours before, it was that wet. I tend to start splitting and stacking around now. I stack on a patch on the west side of the garden, and cover the stack with whatever. You need to cover it, even if you have to buy something in. Scaffolding cladding is cheap, if you can find a local supplier. The stuff in the picture is roofing underlay from screwfix. It gets plenty of westerly wind, as there is nothing next door except a few fields. This lot was stacked in spring, and was burnable by Autumn. They're cut to 8", and split to quite a small section, as I only have a standard terraced house size grate. There are 4 parallel stacks here, with 8" gaps between them. I ought to stack them looser this year, or leave air holes, but this all burned ok, apart from the bottom..you can see how the rain has hit the ground and splashed up, and there was a lot of rain last year!! I also make a round stack, but that wasn't so good. It fell over after a month, and had to be restacked, and the lower half didn't seem to be that dry.

You need to cost it out. I bought an astravan to use whenever I didn't need the landrover - the astra does about 50 mpg rather than 25 mpg. I've saved a lot on fuel, but I'm paying twice as much road tax, plus the astra insurance is dearer because I have to start on 0 no claims bonus for that policy. Add in a few breakdowns, and I haven't really saved much money at all. The road tax and insurance stuff is stupid - it's not as if I can drive both vehicles at once!!

One of my recent favourites is "The Restraint of Beasts" by Magnus Mills. Very funny in a dark way.

That's a good looking truck..I'm thinking of upgrading to something similar. Can you give us some details on the hiab? I'm interested in what weights it can lift and at what reach, as well as how much weight it puts on the vehicle itself.

Nah, sod summer! I know the office wallahs enjoy it, but they don't go to work with the equivalent of a tog 13 quilt wrapped round their legs. As we're camped out in the woods, we've tried south european hours this week..work til 1pm, siesta til 3, then work on til 7pm. It was a lot better, as you can get out of the kit, have a wash, and just cool down out of it for a bit.

Inexperienced users seem to be coming up a lot here, but I read a while ago that one of the biggest groups who suffer accidents are in their late 30s/early 40s with 10+ years under their belt. Complacency must be up there pretty close to inexperience.

Done that, they look ok. I've managed to reset the bios so that it comes on when I switch on at the mains, so I hope the thing can struggle on til I find the money to buy a new one. Can anyone recommend a basic model or place to go ? NOT pcworld, as nobody in there can tell their arse from their elbow, from what I've seen. I'm not sure whether a desktop would be best, or whether a laptop might be cheaper..

Well it seems to be working ok for the forum. Looking on google, it may well be a power supply problem, apparently if one of the voltages drops even a tiny amount, it won't recognise it as the startup signal. Just dirt in it can act as lots of mini resistors and drop the voltage slightly. I think it's due for the bin, though. One of the other problems is that up to date downloads like pdf readers won't work on windows 98, so by the time you've paid for an up to date operating system, you might as well buy a whole new computer..

I tend to keep things for as long as I can keep them going, but I'm starting to think that the hardware on this thing's about had it. The trouble is, now it's starting to go wrong, I'm realising how much stuff I do on it..all my accounts, my tax and vat is all online, etc. Perhaps I'd better start counting the pennies for a new one.

I'm thinking it might be the motherboard. The whole thing must be 10 years old or so, but I think the motherboard's about 5 yrs old or so.

I'm having trouble with my computer. Sometimes, I can't get it to switch on at all. There's power getting to the motherboard, because a green LED comes on. I can press the power switch repeatedly, nothing will happen, then suddenly it will power up and everything's fine.It's an intermittent fault, with no apparent rhyme nor reason, which has been getting worse. My normal approach would be to soak it with WD40, hit it, soak it with more WD40, then look for terminals to short out with a 10p piece, or something, but I'm not sure if that would work here. Any ideas?

If these were the only two days you've employed the bloke, the self employment test might stand. If you regularly work together, it gets more difficult. I heard of one self employed contractor working for an organisation, who injured himself with his own equipment, when working on his own. He put in a claim against the organisation, the central plank of which was that he should be regarded as an employee, given all the work that this organisation had given him in the past, so is therefore entitled to claim for his injuries almost regardless of blame. Talk about biting the hand that's been feeding him..the effects are rippling down to other contractors now, as the organisation tries to spread the work out thinner to avoid a repeat. People who regularly work together and say they are self employed need to be very careful how they divide up the work and invoice each other, imo.

Do you mean 20 ton or so?

Blackthorn would be good, because the wounds go septic, but I reckon pyrocantha has the sharpest thorns.